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Ebook Industry Changes (linkspam)
Five things make a linkspam? Lots of changes in the ebookery world:
Overdrive stops supporting Mobipocket--a side effect of the new Kindle library ebooks. Most of those older ebooks will be converted to Kindle (which is Mobipocket format with different DRM setup); some will be lost entirely. Overdrive is planning to refund library purchases of those books.
CONCLUSION: Digital purchases are not intended to be forever; they're "until the company that manages the servers decides they're not worth supporting anymore."
Vook stops making content to focus on software. Vookbooks, if you didn't know (I'm fairly oblivious & only know they exist because I hang out in too many ebook forums) are interactive, app-like ebooks.
CONCLUSION: If there's a substantial market for "enhanced" ebooks, nobody knows what to do with it yet. (My thoughts: There's a market, but it's not the book market, just like the market for movies is not "enhanced stage plays.")
California Reader Privacy Act signed into law; a nice step towards treating ebook access like pbook access: something that the gov't doesn't have the right to spy on without a compelling (read: court-provable) reason.
CONCLUSION: Yay, someone's paying attention to the frightening amount of personal info moving through the business world with no controls.
Kindle Fire could be iPad killer; skeptics are dismissing it because of the limited functions and "paltry" 8gb storage (wtF? how many movies do you need in your pocket?) without noticing that very few people need the full capabilities of an iPad.
CONCLUSION: There's a long history of small, focused, inexpensive devices driving out large, powerful, costly ones. All the Fire has to be to sweep the market is reliable, not ultra-powerful.
Ebook price-fixing lawsuit focuses on Apple in collusion w/publishers; 5 publishers insist that they spontaneously decided to switch to the "agency model" because it seemed like the best business practice; they didn't coordinate with Apple to squeeze Amazon and convince consumers that ebooks "should" cost more than $10 nope nope nope.
CONCLUSION: While this looks like a very simple, "obviously pricefixing" case, I gather the legalities are complicated. While we can all recognize "companies working together to get more profits," not all of that translates to illegal business practices; companies aren't barred from grabbing business habits from each other--just from coordinating them in advance.
Overdrive stops supporting Mobipocket--a side effect of the new Kindle library ebooks. Most of those older ebooks will be converted to Kindle (which is Mobipocket format with different DRM setup); some will be lost entirely. Overdrive is planning to refund library purchases of those books.
CONCLUSION: Digital purchases are not intended to be forever; they're "until the company that manages the servers decides they're not worth supporting anymore."
Vook stops making content to focus on software. Vookbooks, if you didn't know (I'm fairly oblivious & only know they exist because I hang out in too many ebook forums) are interactive, app-like ebooks.
CONCLUSION: If there's a substantial market for "enhanced" ebooks, nobody knows what to do with it yet. (My thoughts: There's a market, but it's not the book market, just like the market for movies is not "enhanced stage plays.")
California Reader Privacy Act signed into law; a nice step towards treating ebook access like pbook access: something that the gov't doesn't have the right to spy on without a compelling (read: court-provable) reason.
CONCLUSION: Yay, someone's paying attention to the frightening amount of personal info moving through the business world with no controls.
Kindle Fire could be iPad killer; skeptics are dismissing it because of the limited functions and "paltry" 8gb storage (wtF? how many movies do you need in your pocket?) without noticing that very few people need the full capabilities of an iPad.
CONCLUSION: There's a long history of small, focused, inexpensive devices driving out large, powerful, costly ones. All the Fire has to be to sweep the market is reliable, not ultra-powerful.
Ebook price-fixing lawsuit focuses on Apple in collusion w/publishers; 5 publishers insist that they spontaneously decided to switch to the "agency model" because it seemed like the best business practice; they didn't coordinate with Apple to squeeze Amazon and convince consumers that ebooks "should" cost more than $10 nope nope nope.
CONCLUSION: While this looks like a very simple, "obviously pricefixing" case, I gather the legalities are complicated. While we can all recognize "companies working together to get more profits," not all of that translates to illegal business practices; companies aren't barred from grabbing business habits from each other--just from coordinating them in advance.
no subject
Or even if not driving out, changing the overall market. The Wii is a recent example, especially given its launch in proximity to the complex and expensive PS3.
That news about Overdrive is disturbing.